In this week’s newsletter:

• Why inviting more people now can help you attend fewer meetings later
• ​Announcement: upcoming webinars​
• Warm-up and checkout questions to use this week
• Weekly Bird Break

We’re often told to make invitees “optional” in our meetings.

In many instances, I agree. Instead of having multiple team members in the same meeting, most could be doing other important work and receive asynchronous updates separately.

Sometimes, however, the cost of that temporary duplication of effort is actually an investment.

One of my favorite HBR articles last year was by Elsbeth Johnson on delegation (link + companion podcast). In it, Johnson outlines blockers that get in our way as leaders when we try to delegate.

One blocker, Johnson explains, is that our boss or client may foil delegation attempts by expecting us to remain directly involved. The antidote she recommends:

While, I’d recommend being more strategic in your invitations (not “as many as possible”), you can use meetings with your boss or clients as opportunities to reinforce your team’s expertise and authority, which lays the foundation to make future delegation stick.

Let’s say your boss in the C-suite asks you to share last quarter’s results and what you’re doing to improve next quarter. You might say, “We’re fortunate to have José here today. He ran the full analysis, and Ana facilitated a post-mortem and planning session with our team to identify next steps. Let’s hear from both of them, and then I’m happy to answer any follow-up questions.”

Sometimes we instinctively believe deferring to our team in high-stakes meetings reflects negatively on us. “Will the client think I don’t know what’s going on?” “Will my teammate be annoyed they need to carry the load?” More often, it’s the opposite. Your team member gets visible credit for work they’ve done, and when your boss or client sees that the people you’ve hired, managed, and developed have a strong command of the work, they’re seeing evidence of how well you lead.

After your teammates demonstrate their expertise a few times, you’re less likely to get pushback when you delegate a future question from your boss to one of them.

Meeting Minute

Use these to start and end your meetings this week

​Warm-up question​

This can be used on your own team to help prepare your teammates to show up effectively as they’re taking on more responsibility with clients or more senior leaders. Then transition to asking “what can we commit to doing in meetings and when responding to ad-hoc questions to help build senior leadership's trust in us?”

It can also be used on a leadership team as an organization is scaling or shifting in some way. For this, it can be helpful to name: if we expect one another to delegate more, we need to trust those to whom we’re all delegating.

​Check-out question​

This is a request for feedforward. You might use it in a team meeting with strong psychological safety, but it will often work better one-on-one. Ask your direct reports, peer leaders, and even your boss at the end of your one-on-one meetings for a couple of weeks. Then look across their answers and choose one thing to change.